What a branch prints, and what a branch is numbered

Play this lesson as slides — one slide per step, with the same narration. The full text of every step is on this page.

This lesson covers the two things a branch stamps on every document that leaves it: the layout it prints on and the number it carries. Both are configured per branch, both have a path that ignores the branch entirely, and the failures are quiet in different ways — one screen that will not print, one e-mail that arrives empty. About twelve minutes.

Step 1 — Set the branch default that pre-selects the print dialog

After this step pressing Print at a branch chooses the right layout by itself. The failure to expect at a new branch is not a wrong layout. It is a dialog that will not print: when somebody presses Print, the drop-down is pre-selected with this branch’s default for this document type, then with the applet’s own printable setting, and with neither of those the selection is empty and the screen fails before anything reaches the server. Nothing tells the person at the counter why. Set one default per branch and document type — the screen updates the existing row rather than adding a second, so pressing save twice is harmless.

Reference: Printable Formats and Per-Branch Defaults — Step 2: Set the branch’s default

Step 2 — Know the e-mail path that silently sends nothing

After this step you will know why a customer says the attachment was missing. When a document goes out through a message template, the layout is the one named on that template’s branch or company link; if the link names none, the branch default is used instead. If neither exists, the e-mail is sent anyway, with no attachment, and nothing is raised. Nobody sees an error — not the sender, not a queue, not you. The customer receives a covering note with nothing behind it. So if one branch’s e-mails are arriving bare, look for its branch default before you look at the template.

Reference: Printable Formats and Per-Branch Defaults — Four rules for choosing a layout

Step 3 — Accept the one document your branch cannot restyle

After this step you will stop trying to give a branch its own e-invoice layout. The validated e-invoice PDF, the one carrying the QR code, is chosen from the company’s e-invoice formats, highest priority first, and falls back to a template built into the platform. The branch default is never consulted on that path at all. So every GadgetSphere branch sends the same e-invoice layout by design, and a shop that wants its own address block on that particular document cannot have one. Its ordinary printed invoice can differ from its neighbour’s; its e-invoice cannot.

Reference: Printable Formats and Per-Branch Defaults — Four rules for choosing a layout

Step 4 — Type the header and footer, and know when they will not appear

After this step you will not spend an afternoon on a header that never prints. The same branch default row carries Header and Footer text, handed to the layout as two parameters. There are two separate reasons they may never appear, and they need different people. Either the template was not built to ask for those parameters, which is a question for whoever wrote it. Or this document type prints through the generic path, which never passes them at all, no matter how the template is written — and in that case no template change will help. Establish which before you send anybody away to edit a layout.

Reference: Printable Formats and Per-Branch Defaults — Step 2: Set the branch’s default

Step 5 — Read the branch and location numbers on a document

After this step the auditor’s question has an answer. Every document carries several running numbers side by side. The one a cashier reads is the tenant number, handed out the moment the document is created, one sequence per document type across all three GadgetSphere companies and all twenty-two branches. Beside it sit a company number, a branch number and a company-and-location number, each from its own sequence, and all three are stamped only when the document goes final. So a draft has a tenant number and nothing else, and a branch column is blank on every row that was never finalised. That is not a fault.

Reference: Document Numbering — The three numbers on every document

Step 6 — Show a branch manager their own sequence

After this step a branch can see its own numbering. The branch number is on every finalised document and the listing hides it by default. Each column is governed by a pair: a tenant-wide hide setting in the document applet’s own settings, and a per-role show permission. Leave the hide setting off and everyone sees the column; switch it on and only roles holding the matching show permission keep it — but only where that permission code is actually seeded for that applet, and for many applets it is not. Check the applet’s own reference page before you rely on hiding a column from anybody.

Reference: Document Numbering — Step 1: Show the company and branch numbers on the listing

How the steps fit together

    flowchart TD
  s1["Step 1 — Set the branch default that pre-selects the print dialog"]
  s2["Step 2 — Know the e-mail path that silently sends nothing"]
  s3["Step 3 — Accept the one document your branch cannot restyle"]
  s4["Step 4 — Type the header and footer, and know when they will not appear"]
  s5["Step 5 — Read the branch and location numbers on a document"]
  s6["Step 6 — Show a branch manager their own sequence"]
  s1 --> s2
  s2 --> s3
  s3 --> s4
  s4 --> s5
  s5 --> s6
  

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next lesson: Locations: class, transit, and what runs for you · Back to the course